THE OBSTACLE IS THE WAY by Ryan Holiday

• Our actions may be impeded . . . but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting.
• The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.
• Let’s be honest: Most of us are paralyzed. Whatever our individual goals, most of us sit frozen before the many obstacles that lie ahead of us.
• All great victories, be they in politics, business, art, or seduction, involved resolving vexing problems with a potent cocktail of creativity, focus, and daring. When you have a goal, obstacles are actually teaching you how to get where you want to go—carving you a path. “The Things which hurt,” Benjamin Franklin wrote, “instruct.”
• Today, most of our obstacles are internal, not external.
• Many of our problems come from having too much:
• Overcoming obstacles is a discipline of three critical steps. It begins with how we look at our specific problems, our attitude or approach; then the energy and creativity with which we actively break them down and turn them into opportunities; finally, the cultivation and maintenance of an inner will that allows us to handle defeat and difficulty. It’s three interdependent, interconnected, and fluidly contingent disciplines: Perception, Action, and the Will.
• WHAT IS PERCEPTION? It’s how we see and understand what occurs around us—and what we decide those events will mean.
• You will come across obstacles in life—fair and unfair. And you will discover, time and time again, that what matters most is not what these obstacles are but how we see them, how we react to them, and whether we keep our composure. You will learn that this reaction determines how successful we will be in overcoming—or possibly thriving because of—them.
• Seen properly, everything that happens—be it an economic crash or a personal tragedy—is a chance to move forward.
• We decide what we will make of each and every situation. We decide whether we’ll break or whether we’ll resist. We decide whether we’ll assent or reject. No one can force us to give up or to believe something that is untrue (such as, that a situation is absolutely hopeless or impossible to improve). Our perceptions are the thing that we’re in complete control of.
• we are never completely powerless.
• There is no good or bad without us, there is only perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.
• A mistake becomes training.
• Don’t forget, there are always people out there looking to get you.
• There is always a countermove, always an escape or a way through, so there is no reason to get worked up. No one said it would be easy and, of course, the stakes are high, but the path is there for those ready to take it.
• When people panic, they make mistakes.
• Obstacles make us emotional, but the only way we’ll survive or overcome them is by keeping those emotions in check—if
• If you need to take a moment, by all means, go ahead. Real strength lies in the control or, as Nassim Taleb put it, the domestication of one’s emotions, not in pretending they don’t exist.
• We defeat emotions with logic, or at least that’s the idea. Logic is questions and statements. With enough of them, we get to root causes (which are always easier to deal with).
• Musashi understood that the observing eye sees simply what is there. The perceiving eye sees more than what is there.
• The more skilled you become seeing things for what they are, the more perception will work for you rather than against you.
• Perspective is everything.
• The task, as Pericles showed, is not to ignore fear but to explain it away. Take what you’re afraid of—when fear strikes you—and break it apart.
• Remember: We choose how we’ll look at things. We retain the ability to inject perspective into a situation. We can’t change the obstacles themselves—that part of the equation is set—but the power of perspective can change how the obstacles appear. How we approach, view, and contextualize an obstacle, and what we tell ourselves it means, determines how daunting and trying it will be to overcome.
• Where the head goes, the body follows. Perception precedes action. Right action follows the right perspective.
• When it comes to perception, this is the crucial distinction to make: the difference between the things that are in our power and the things that aren’t.
• Focusing exclusively on what is in our power magnifies and enhances our power. But every ounce of energy directed at things we can’t actually influence is wasted—self-indulgent and self-destructive.
• The point is that most people start from disadvantage (often with no idea they are doing so) and do just fine. It’s not unfair, it’s universal. Those who survive it, survive because they took things day by day—that’s the real secret.
• Focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead.
• For all species other than us humans, things just are what they are. Our problem is that we’re always trying to figure out what things mean—why things are the way they are.
• Our perceptions determine, to an incredibly large degree, what we are and are not capable of. In many ways, they determine reality itself.
• Be open. Question.
• An entrepreneur is someone with faith in their ability to make something where there was nothing before.
• Problems are rarely as bad as we think—or rather, they are precisely as bad as we think.
• Action is commonplace, right action is not. As a discipline, it’s not any kind of action that will do, but directed action. Everything must be done in the service of the whole.
• Action is the solution and the cure to our predicaments.
• You’re going soft. You’re not aggressive enough. You’re not pressing ahead.
• Stay moving, always.
• For most of what we attempt in life, chops are not the issue. We’re usually skilled and knowledgeable and capable enough.
• Persist in your efforts. Resist giving in to distraction, discouragement, or disorder.
• A new path is, by definition, uncleared.
• It’s okay to be discouraged. It’s not okay to quit.
• On the path to successful action, we will fail—possibly many times.
• Action and failure are two sides of the same coin.
• When failure does come, ask: What went wrong here? What can be improved? What am I missing?
• Failure puts you in corners you have to think your way out of. It is a source of breakthroughs.
• The one way to guarantee we don’t benefit from failure—to ensure it is a bad thing—is to not learn from it.
• In the chaos of sport, as in life, process provides us a way.
• The process is about finishing.
• Finishing the smallest task you have right in front of you and finishing it well.
• You know what your job is. Stop jawing and get to work.
• The process is about doing the right things, right now.
• Everything is a chance to do and be your best.
• Forget the rule book, settle the issue.
• Start thinking like a radical pragmatist: still ambitious, aggressive, and rooted in ideals, but also imminently practical and guided by the possible.
• Think progress, not perfection.
• You don’t convince people by challenging their longest and most firmly held opinions. You find common ground and work from there.
• Sometimes you overcome obstacles not by attacking them but by withdrawing and letting them attack you. You can use the actions of others against themselves instead of acting yourself.
• Great commanders look for decision points.
• Nothing can ever prevent us from trying. Ever.
• It’s highly unlikely we will ever get rid of all the unpleasant and unpredictable parts of life.
• we should always prepare for things to get tough.
• To be great at something takes practice. Obstacles and adversity are no different.
• A premortem is different. In it, we look to envision what could go wrong, what will go wrong, in advance, before we start. Far too many ambitious undertakings fail for preventable reasons. Far too many people don’t have a backup plan because they refuse to consider that something might not go exactly as they wish.
• The only guarantee, ever, is that things will go wrong.
• About the worst thing that can happen is not something going wrong, but something going wrong and catching you by surprise.
• You don’t have to like something to master it—or to use it to some advantage.
• We instinctively think about how much better we’d like any given situation to be. We start thinking about what we’d rather have. Rarely do we consider how much worse things could have been.
• things can always be worse.
• To do great things, we need to be able to endure tragedy and setbacks. We’ve got to love what we do and all that it entails, good and bad. We have to learn to find joy in every single thing that happens.
• The next step after we discard our expectations and accept what happens to us, after understanding that certain things—particularly bad things—are outside our control, is this: loving whatever happens to us and facing it with unfailing cheerfulness.
• We don’t get to choose what happens to us, but we can always choose how we feel about it.
• Life is not about one obstacle, but many.
• We’re all just humans, doing the best we can. We’re all just trying to survive, and in the process, inch the world forward a little bit.
• Reminding ourselves each day that we will die helps us treat our time as a gift.
• First, see clearly. Next, act correctly. Finally, endure and accept the world as it is.
• There is one translation of Marcus Aurelius to read and that is Gregory Hayes’s amazing edition for the Modern Library.